Paula: An Innocent Victim Of Argentina`s `Dirty War`

September 29, 1985|By Vincent J. Schodolski, Chicago Tribune

BUENOS AIRES, ARGENTINA — This is the story of a little girl who, like hundreds of other Argentine children, embodies a national tragedy.

It is the story of kidnapping, torture, murder and deceit done with the approval of the men who then ruled Argentina. It is the story of the truly innocent victims of this country`s ``dirty war`` during the 1970s in which the military sought the extinction of leftist guerrillas.

The story of Paula Eva Logares is known because of the work of the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo, a group of women who have given up hope of ever finding their children -- part of the 9,000 ``desaparecidos`` or ``disappeared ones`` who simply vanished as the junta hunted down those it perceived to be its enemies.

Now these women fight to find their children`s children, a piece of the lives taken from them.

Elsa Beatrice Pavon de Aguilar joined the grandmothers during her search for her granddaughter, Paula. She said the child, who would now be 9, was taken from her parents when they were hauled away by security forces on the suspicion of being radicals.

Paula, like hundreds of other children, some of whom were born in secret jails to mothers blindfolded during delivery so they would never see their babies, was given to a pro-government policeman who reared her as his own child.

The men who ran the ``dirty war`` judged the policeman`s home a more acceptable environment. And because of this judgment, the grandmothers say, possibly hundreds of children were illegally adopted by the very men who had killed their parents.

It was on the clear winter afternoon of May 18, 1978, that 23-month-old Paula and her parents, Claudio Ernesto Logares and Monica Sophia Grinspon de Logares, walked through the Uruguayan capital of Montevideo.

Paula`s parents, political opponents of the Argentine junta, had fled to Uruguay to escape the roundup of dissidents.

Pavon de Aguilar learned later that as the family passed the Miami Cinema, two cars pulled up. Paula and her mother were dragged off into one; her father, after being hooded and beaten, was thrown into the other.

It was a method that became widespread. Some dissidents were abducted from their homes, others on the streets. Fearful of leaving the children behind as witnesses, or even as evidence, the kidnappers took them along.

After neighbors noticed that the Logares family had not been home for several days, word was sent to Pavon de Aguilar. She arrived from Buenos Aires to look for the family.

It was the start of a search that would last six years.

A weary woman with sad eyes ringed by dark circles, she began by asking the Uruguayan authorities for information. She was told there was none. Returning to Buenos Aires, she began looking for Paula only, having been advised that the political situation made it almost certain she would get no news of her daughter and her son-in-law.

Monica and Claudio have never been found. Pavon de Aguilar heard nothing about the child for two years. Then she became involved with the grandmothers group.

Through the network of contacts the grandmothers had established with human rights organizations throughout the world, Pavon de Aguilar eventually received three pictures of a little girl believed to be Paula. She was living in a Buenos Aires suburb.

The grandmothers group said the photographs were taken by a woman who had heard of their work and became suspicious of her neighbors after hearing them quarreling one night. The neighbor shouted at her husband, ``You killed the parents of this little girl and then you bring her to my house and expect me to care for her.``

``They brought the pictures to my house and showed them to me,`` said Pavon de Aguilar. ``Everything in the world told me it was Paula. The features coincided. It was the same little face, the light brown hair, the light brown eyes.``

Pavon de Aguilar, with the help of another grandmother, staked out the house of Ruben Luis Lavallen and his wife, Teresa Leiro.

Lavallen, who at the time headed the police in the Province of Buenos Aires, had a little girl named Paula Luisa Lavallen. On her birth certificate, which Pavon de Aguilar believes was manufactured by officials friendly to the policeman, he had listed Paula`s birth date as May 25, 1978. It was just a few days after the kidnapping of Paula Logares.

But it took three more years of legal battles and the return of civilian democracy to Argentina before Pavon de Aguilar would win Paula.

Sophisticated genetic testing, done with help from U.S. experts, established with 99.98 percent certainty that Paula is a member of the same family as Pavon de Aguilar.

The tests are sufficient to establish grandparentage, experts working with organization say.

Even now, Lavallen, a Mercedes-Benz dealer in Buenos Aires, is fighting the case and insisting Paula is his natural child. As a result, Pavon de Aguilar has only temporary custody of the girl.